Happy birthday, Jack Bruce

On this day in 1943, the bass guitarist, singer, and composer Jack Bruce was born in Scotland.

Jack Bruce is best known for his work with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker in the “supergroup” Cream, in the late 1960s. Along with lyricist Pete Brown, with whom he frequently collaborated, he wrote several of Cream’s most popular songs, including “Sunshine of Your Love”, “White Room”, and “I Feel Free”, and he did the vocals on the group’s recordings and performances of them.

In the early 1990s, Jack Bruce reunited with Ginger Baker and, adding guitarist Gary Moore, formed an excellent but short-lived trio called BBM. They produced one album, “Around the Next Dream”, and Bruce and Moore co-wrote three of the best songs on that album. A lyric from the opening track, “Waiting in the Wings”, gives the album its title. The song’s immediately catching, with a great guitar riff, and vocals by Bruce:

She was standing in the dark, waiting in the wings,
Just around the next dream.
She was holding all the keys to set my heart free,
Behind the shadows of love.

From the distance I could see her standing alone,
Shine like a jewel in the night.
Hidden from the eyes, a thief of the soul,
Behind the shadows of love.

Set me on fire with the stories you tell,
Drown in an ocean of dreams.
Close to the flame on wings of desire,
Nothing’s what it seems.

She was waiting outside with arms open wide,
Ready to break my heart’s fall.
Oh, the lightning in her eyes, I learned how to fly
Behind the shadows of love.

Set me on fire with the stories you tell,
Drown in an ocean of dreams.
Close to the flame on wings of desire,
Nothing’s what it seems.